Dienstag, 29. Mai 2012

Western discourse about Palestine or Palestinians is peppered by stereotypes such as “terrorists”, “suicide bombers”, “irrational” or “unreliable” people. These generalizations say more about Western perceptions than Palestinian reality. Sarah Irving’s book deals with the first Palestinian “woman terrorist”, Leila Khaled, in a balanced way, without becoming a hagiography. It is based on interviews with Laila Khaled carried out in Amman, where she now lives; her autobiography; and on some articles published in the “Guardian” and in left-wing magazines.

Leila’s public image has been almost entirely dictated by her defining hijackings of 1969 and 1970. Since then she has become a mother, teacher, campaigner, a member of the Palestinian National Council and a leader in the General Union of Palestinian Women. Like other militants and those labeled “terrorists” – from Northern Ireland to Nicaragua – she has moved from the armed struggle to the political arena. The two hijackings gained her an icon status.

Sarah Irving, currently enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, is a writer for different media outlets, an author of the “Bradt Guide to Palestine” and a co-author, with Sharyn Lock, of “Gaza: Beneath the bombs”. She portrays the “girl hijacker”, like the international press used to call Leila Khaled, not as ruthless person but rather as a child of her time who was expelled from Haifa at the age of five and who had to endure the dismal live of a refugee. To understand Khaled´s early militancy, it is important to keep the historical context in mind.

Internationally, it was the time of liberation struggles of peoples suffering under Western colonialism and military aggression, including the Vietnam War. The youth of the world were in commotion and protested against the factitiousness of society and complacency and hypocrisy of their parents. The books by Frantz Fanon strongly influenced the radical debate of that period because he provided a moral rationale for “The Wretched of the Earth” to use the power of arms: It was a way to redeem the pride and dignity of colonized peoples. The strategy of armed struggle was discussed worldwide. Che Guevara was killed two years before Khaled undertook her first hijacking in 1969. She had joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which was founded in 1967, and she was willing to use hijacking as a “tactic” to bring the Palestinian question to the world´s attention. She later explained: “Outside of Palestine and the Arab world, the Palestinian question was not visible”. Irving´s book makes it clear that such actions were not considered a “strategy” for either Khaled or the PFLP. Consequently, she rejected suicide bombings because they were counterproductive to the image of the Palestinian people and their legitimate struggle for freedom from Israeli occupation and self-determination.

Socialized by her family into the Arab National Movement (ANM), traumatized by the expulsion from her birthplace Haifa in 1948, and horrified by the total defeat of the Arab armies in the June war of 1967, she decided to join the PFLP and become a fighter. Getting this assignment as a woman in a patriarchal society was very difficult. Only through dedication and willpower she was chosen by the Central Committee of the PFLP to hijack an airplane. Together with Salim Issawi she boarded a TWA plane from departing Rome for Athens. They ordered the pilot to fly to Haifa, Khaled’s birthplace, before the plane landed in Damascus. With her “Audrey Hepburn lookalike” the hijackers scared but did not harm any of the terrified passengers, writes Sarah Irving. The author characterized Khaled as being “evasive but amiable to the follow passenger trying to chat her up”. For Khaled, harming anybody was beyond the pale. With the celebrity status, which Khaled gained through this hijacking, she felt very uncomfortable. In order to escape recognition, she underwent several plastic surgeries in Beirut before undertaking the next hijacking. Together with Patrick Arguello, a Nicaraguan-American member of the Sandinista movement, she boarded an El Al flight in Amsterdam bound to New York. Over the English Channel, they tried to force their way into the cockpit, but things went badly for the assailants. The pilot used a nosedive to throw the hijackers off balance. Arguello was shot dead, Khaled was captured. She had to spend a few months in British custody before she was extradited to Syria. She never faced any charges till this day.

Khaled was not born a hijacker. Before she decided to undertake such actions, she studied at the American University in Beirut and worked as a teacher in Kuwait. The tragic history of her people politicized her. Khaled was only married for a short while. After the assassination by a Mossad car bomb of Ghassan Kanafani, a renowned Palestinian writer, the PFLP ordered Khaled underground. Shortly after, she obtained a divorce. For her, writes Irving, “even her most personal affairs must fit, it seems, within the framework of revolutionary commitments”.

Since 1973, Leila Khaled became involved in the Palestinian women´s movement. Because of her status as a female icon of the Palestinian struggle, her role was always ambiguous, writes Irving. Critics have pointed to the chasm between the respect given to high-profile women such as Khaled, and the ordinary oppression facing women in the Palestinian patriarchal society, both as refugees in exile and under Israeli occupation. Yet, since the early twentieth century, women have been involved in the Palestinian national movement. Their dedications during the Palestinian intifadas are impressive, although the rise of Islamic influence has reduced their visible role. According to Khaled Hroub, Hamas’ women, including those in positions of leadership, are almost invisible to the outside world.

Till the early 1980s, the PFLP avoided any contacts with Israelis. Leila Khaled tells about a “strange” encounter at an international conference, where she was introduced by a Soviet friend to a woman who spoke Arabic with a foreign accent. She said she did not know that woman. Khaled’s friend introduced that person as “Felicia Langer, the Israeli lawyer who defends all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails”. Khaled said OK, nice meeting you, and left. She later recalled: “I was shaking. One of the members of our groups asked what was wrong with me, and (…) tears came. I said: Imagine! Felicia Langer hugged me.” When they heard Felicia Langer speaking, they had second thoughts about their strict anti-Israeli attitude because “this woman talks like us”.

Having learnt a lesson from her encounter with Felicia Langer, Khaled doesn´t dismiss the possibility of working together with some Israelis. She praises particularly those Israelis who join weekly demonstrations against the Separation Wall at the West Bank. However, she remains skeptical when it comes to Zionist groups like “Peace Now”. Any talk breaks off when it comes to issues such as Jerusalem and the refugees. Khaled sees a difference between those who support the rights of the Palestinian people on principle and those who support Palestinians on humanitarian grounds. Khaled estimates that unless the Palestinian right of return and the question of the land are settled in a just manner, the conflict will go on forever.

Sarah Irving´s book provides a fair and thorough account of “the poster girl of Palestinian militancy” that inspired not only her own people but also militants in the West. Her biography, from a child of refugees via a “hijack girl” to a mother who works relentlessly for the right of Palestinian women and more generally for her own people, is extraordinary. This book represents a successful launch of the new series “Revolutionary Lives” started by Pluto Press.

Sonntag, 13. Mai 2012

The establishment of the State of Israel in Palestine and the myth of Jewish return after two thousand years of exile to a “land without a people, for a people without a land” were accompanied by a great injustice. The diplomatic success of the Zionist movement in close cooperation with the leading imperial powers caused, however, a catastrophe for the indigenous population and the owners of the land, the Palestinian people. “Palestine” was wiped off the map. Since then, the Palestinians commemorate this historical event for the 64th time as al-Nakba (the catastrophe). And this catastrophe continues until today.

The creation of the State of Israel led to the destruction of 500 Palestinian villages and towns, and the whole population disappeared from the political map. Out of 900 000 only 160 000 remained in what was called Israel. They had to endure 18 years of harsh military rule, with severe restrictions on their movement. The bulk of their land was expropriated based on dubious laws. After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel occupied the rest of historical Palestine and expelled another 300 000 people. Since this “glorious” victory, left and right-wing Israeli governments alike, colonized the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and transferred 500 000 their own population against international law in what was left of Palestine.

On Israel’s Independence Day, May 15, 1948, the Israeli government encourages the so-called “Israeli Arabs” to celebrate the Zionist colonization of their land and the destruction of historic Palestine. In Israeli school books, the Nakba is just not mentioned. The Palestinian kids get a special treatment of Zionist ideological indoctrination. They are educated according to the Zionist narrative that distains their cultural heritage and comes close to a “cultural genocide” (Raphael Lemkin). According to Lemkin, it means the destruction and elimination of the cultural patterns of a group or of the “soul of a nation”, which is exactly, what happens in Palestine.

The policies of the Israeli governments have always aimed at a “memoricide” and the de-Arabisation of Palestine. The policy of renaming and the self-reinvention of a Hebrew terminology started already long before the State of Israel was established. After 1948 the Israeli government under David Ben-Gurion started a “biblicisation” of the Arab geography by placing events, actions and places in-line with biblical terminology, such as the transformation from al-Majdal to biblical Ashkelon. A political misleading role plays the Jewish National Fund (JNF) through his so-called reforestation or the “green-washing” of the Nakba. The JNF collects donations that are tax-privileged in the United States or in Western Europe, although the JNF is not a charitable Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) but a part-state institution. The organization has always been and continues to be instrumental in the colonization of Palestine and the expropriation of Palestinian land.

In the late 1980s, it had the impression as if some Israeli historians, sociologists and political scientists came to grips with the crimes and injustices that were committed by the Israeli army in the cause of the establishment of Israel. “New historians” emerged on the scene and published books, in which the dominant Zionist historic narrative was rejected or at least put into perspective. Leading in the rewriting of Zionist history were Simcha Flapan, Benny Morris, Avi Shlaim and Ilan Pappé. In the decade of the “New Historians” between 1990 and 2000 they made good progress in exposing the true face of Zionism and its ideological underpinnings. But with the final collapse of the so-called peace process at Camp David in July 2000 and Ehud Barak’s statement that there is no peace-partner on the Palestinian side, the whole of the so-called Zionist left and the peace-camp switched sides and blamed PLO-chief Yasser Arafat for the failure, although Barak was the main rejectionist and U. S. President Bill Clinton his partner. In the cause of time, the “new historians” felt strong headwind not only from the political but also from the scientific establishment. Especially, the public mobbing of Ilan Pappé forced him out of the country. In British exile, he can continue to work and teach freely as a historian.

In contrast, Benny Morris returned to the Zionist consensus and exposed himself as a supporter of the idea of “transfer”. In his infamous interview with Ari Shavit in the Israeli daily “Haaretz” from January 9, 2004, Morris justified the “ethnic cleansing” done by David Ben-Gurion. And if there is “the choice between ethnic cleansing and genocide (…) I prefer ethnic cleansing.” The so-called liberal Zionism with which the Zionist left is identified, sees Israel’s injustices beginning with the occupation of June 1967, whereas historians like Ilan Pappé makes 1948 events the vocal point of the Israel Palestinian conflict.

Without addressing the Nakba, the key site of the Palestinian consciousness and the most important event that links the Palestinians in Israel, the refugees and the Palestinians under Israel colonization in the OPT together, the Palestinian victims have strong reservations to forgive their Israeli perpetrators. The history of the conflict must be decolonized because it has been predominantly written by Zionist historians. To accept the Palestinian narrative in Israeli school books should be self-evidence because almost 25 % of Israel’s citizens are Palestinians. “While the Holocaust is an event in the past”, writes Nur Masalha in his worth reading book “The Palestine Nakba”, the Nakba did not end in 1948 but continues through forced displacement and continued colonization of the West Bank to this day.

Wenn es nicht mehr gelingt, die Macht der „Banksters“ mit ihrem vagabundierenden und globalisierten Kapital das Handwerk zu legen, kann die politische Klasse in Europa ihre „Kompetenzen“ an die Finanzoligarchen abtreten, wenn es diese nicht schon lange getan hat. Hollande sollte die anderen europäischen Regierungschefs für eine radikale Wende ihrer Politik gegenüber der Zentralmacht der Brüsseler Bürokratie gewinnen, ansonsten bleibt ihm nichts anders mehr übrig, Frankreich in folgenden wichtigen Politikbereichen auf europäischen Standard zu hieven. Diesen verbleibenden Handlungsspielraum hat Diana Johnstone auf der Website „counterpunch“ wie folgt umschrieben: „He can advocate gay marriage, which has become the flagship proposal of those who want to prove they are “on the left” by infuriating a segment of the conservative right. Hollande has promised to give homosexuals the right to marry and adopt children, to enforce employment quotas for the handicapped, to propose legislation allowing the incurably ill to benefit from medical assistance to end life in dignity, to combat racial discrimination, including in police identity checks. If – and it is still a big if – he gets a majority in next month’s legislative elections, President Hollande can keep these civilizational promises without asking permission of Brussels or “the markets”. And based on experience, it is to be expected that the police will be better behaved toward ethnic minorities under a Socialist government than under Sarkozy.”

Sonntag, 6. Mai 2012

When the South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu paid his first visit to Palestine, he was shocked by the similarities between his former Apartheid South Africa and the dismal situation under which occupied Palestinians have been living since the establishment of the State of Israel. In his foreword to this outstanding collection of essays, written by 12 internationally respected scholars and experts, he stated: “Now, alas, we see apartheid in Israel, complete with the `Separation Wall` and Bantustans that keep Palestinians rounded up in prisons. History tragically repeats itself. Yet, injustice and oppression will never prevail.” And it can be added: May the oppressor-state and its U. S. patron together with their cohorts of Israel lobbyists and Christian Zionists do whatever they please, their cause is politically, morally and ethically unjust and they know it. That is why they have been fighting mercilessly every deviant opinion expressed by decision-makers.

What makes these essays important and overly worth reading is the fact that several are dealing with the ineffable role played not only by a certain brand of Christianity in their religiously dressed up rhetoric but also especially the juggernaut of the so-called Christian Zionists who are playing an infamous role in legitimizing every action of this dehumanizing occupation enterprise. For example, late reverend Michael Prior challenges in his essay “Zionism and the challenge of historical truth and morality” the “canonical secular Zionist narrative” and the “canonical religious Zionist narrative” head-on. Although the injustices committed by the Zionist colonizer in the course of the establishment of the State of Israel are historically well known and documented, they had been “passed over in much Western discourse. Indeed, in some religious circles the Zionist enterprise is even clothed in the garment of piety (...) Whereas elsewhere the perpetrators of colonial plunder are objects of opprobrium, the Zionist conquest is widely judged to be a just and appropriate accomplishment, with even unique religious significance.” (33/34) According to Prior, the answers to this opinion lay in the bible and its religious authority.

The “ironclad” support by the West of Israel´s colonial endeavor is not only propagated among secular lobbyists but is also rooted in the “link between the Bible and Zionism” that is deeply established in the popular mind, writes Prior. Although, biblical research shows no evidence in support of the claim that the Bible provides legitimacy to the “canonical” Zionist narrative for the State of Israel, it seems as if for some Christian sects and the Christian-Jewish dialogue groups the removal of the indigenous people becomes an “object of honor”. “It is in the unique case of Zionism that ethnic cleansing is applauded. It would be a pity if mutually respected Jewish-Christian relations demanded the suspension of the moral rules of a universalist morality.” (44)

The political and religious intensions of Christian Zionists and the policy of the International Christian Embassy” (ICEJ) in Jerusalem are revealed by author Vicar Stephen Sizer. The ICEJ is probably the most influential and controversial among Christian Zionist institutions. It is located close to the Israeli Prime Minister´s office. Ironically, this “embassy’s” building had originally been the home of the family of the late Edward W. Said, before being confiscated in 1948 when it was first given to Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher. The ICEJ goes with Israel’s colonial land grab policy in occupied Palestine through thick and thin. Admittedly, it has disavowed preaching the gospel among Jews, in part for pragmatic reasons, since this ensures the support of the political establishment in Israel. Beyond that, it opposes criticism of Israel´s policy towards the Palestinians. ICEJ’s strange theological interpretation of the Bible does not make missionary work necessary because the ICEJ believes that once the Jewish nation is restored to the Land of Israel, the Jews will collectively acknowledge the Christian Messiah when he returns, writes Sizer. How “sophisticated” the Christian Zionist´s intentions are, is shown in an interview with its founder, Jan Willam van der Hoeven, in the “Jerusalem Post” concerning the “covert” Christian missionary. Van der Hoeven denied that ICEJ engages in missionary work and conversion but added: “The Jewish religion must modify itself in the course of time – but on one point only, the identity of the Messiah (…) they must make the modification as a collective entity.” Although, the U. S. American and Israeli political establishments probably realize that this position is in fact “anti-Semitic” they closely cooperate with the ICEJ according to the motto: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Concluding his article, Sizer writes: “The ICEJ, it appears, is a sectarian, pseudo-Christian organization of dispensational origin which has unconditionally endorsed contemporary political Israel as the exclusive fulfillment of God´s promises and purposes made under the Old Covenant.”

For another author, the Reverend Peter J. Miano, the main problems are not “Jewish Zionists” but “Christian Zionists”. Before there were Jewish Zionists, there were Christian ones. “For every Jewish Zionist, there are at least ten Christian Zionists.” (126) Miano`s article is especially useful because it makes an important distinction between fundamentalist and mainstream Christian Zionism. Where the first is a bizarre and obscure ideology, the later is very well established in the halls of the U. S. Congress, the churches, the Christian academia and the biblical academies.

The fundamentalist Christian Zionist doctrine sees the establishment of the State of Israel as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy occurring in the end time. Accordingly, God has a special role for the Jewish people in their covenanted land, and Christian devotion to God requires support for God´s plan of salvation. This religious mythology is being actualized in modern-day Israel. For this special brand of “Christians”, the violence associated with the State of Israel and its victims, the Palestinians, is not understood as a struggle between colonizer and colonized, but as necessary birth pangs of a new eschatological age. The struggle between Israelis and Palestinians is interpreted in apocalyptic terms as part of a broader struggle between the forces of good and evil. The final battle will take place on the plain of Armageddon. (129)

On the other hand, mainstream Christian Zionism is “far more pervasive, fare more mercurial and far more pernicious. It is also much more difficult to expose and critique,” (130) Because Christian Zionists outnumber Jewish Zionists by some one hundred to one, it makes the success of the Zionist agenda much easier to understand, writes Miano. All brands of Zionism possess, however, two characteristics in common: the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel is both a moral imperative and a political necessity. (134) It seems to the reader as if mainstream Christian Zionists resemble the so-called Israeli Zionist Left: They often oppose the Israeli policies in the Palestinian Occupied Territories but they do not mind the violence that took place during the 1948 war. They often recognize the legitimate demands of the Palestinian people for justice even while rationalizing Jewish nationalism by appeal to justice and morality. In addition, mainstream Christian Zionists display no regard for the plight of the Palestinians while staunchly advocating solidarity with the suffering endured by Jews. These wishy-washy Christians pervade “one of the most hallowed precincts of liberal, mainstream Christianity, namely the Jewish-Christian dialogue”. (142) According to the author, this in-group revolves around themselves and is hardly concerned with the suffering of the Palestinians who “experience Zionism as an instrument of catastrophe.” The focus of attention should shift, according to Miano, from the fundamentalist Christian Zionists to mainstream Christian Zionism.

Besides these refreshing articles on the destructive role played by some brands of Christianity in support the Zionist conquest of Palestine, the anthology includes articles by Ilan Pappé, Daniel McGowan, Naseer Aruri, Betsy Barlow, Paul Eisen and others who describe the historical and political implications of the Zionist colonial enterprise for the Palestinian people. The two essays on the meaning of the massacre of Deir Yassin are impressive. For example, Daniel McGowan writes: “Remembering Deir Yassin is for Palestinians what remembering the massacre at Kelcie is for Jews.” (103) On April 9, 1948 a massacre by two Jewish factions, Irgun and the Stern Gang, was committed in a small village on the west side of Jerusalem, only a stone’s throw away from Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust Memorial. The murderers of Irgun and Stern Gang had herded women, children, and the old man into the village school in order to massacre them. This envisaged atrocity was prevented by unarmed Jewish settlers from the adjacent settlement Giv’at Sha’ul. They faced down the murderers of Irgun and Stern Gang and demanded that the lives of the victims be spared. “The true Judaism of these brave people outweighed the extreme Zionism witnessed earlier that fateful day.” (93)

In order to reach a kind of fair agreement between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples the political cocoon, in which the Zionist mythology is woven in, has to be dissolved. In this endeavor, the Christians can do their bit. They have to shed their self-portrayal of the “Beautiful Israel” or the “light onto the nations” rhetoric and see what Israel really is: a brutal occupying power for the last 45 years that has nothing to do with religion, let alone with redemption. The articles in this book support the thesis that the Hebrew Bible debunks the ‘”canonical” Zionist narrative according to which the Bible provides legitimization for the State of Israel. This claim should pull the rug under the feet of all religious Israel fans. And the secular ones should concentrate on historical facts and not on Zionist fairy-tales. The essay in the book give both groups plenty of arguments at hand to argue for justice and the right of self-determination of the oppressed Palestinian people. All essays are very worth reading.

Dienstag, 1. Mai 2012

Should Israel attack Iran’s nuclear installations? Over this question, a fierce dispute flared up among Israel’s security establishment. In the beginning of the year, the former chief of the Israeli Mossad, Meir Dagan, was a lone voice in the wilderness. He called an Israeli attack “the stupidest thing I have ever heard”. Slowly but surely, opposition by reasonable people amongst Israel’s political and military establishment started growing, the more alarmist Benyamin Netanyahu’s and Ehud Barak’s rhetoric towards Iran became. Particularly inclined were Netanyahu’s historical comparisons between Nazi-Germany and the current Iranian leadership.

There is hardly anybody among the serious political analysts in Israel who see the phantom Iranian civilian nuclear program as an “existential threat” to Israel. All the expertise of the 17 U. S. intelligence agencies, the IAEA reports and others leave no doubt that Iran does not peruse a nuclear program that will lead to a nuclear bomb. Even the hardliners in Israel and their belligerent neoconservative supporters in the United States can only warn the public of Iran’s possible “nuclear capability” that does not mean anything at all. Even if Iran’s leadership would decide to go nuclear they still lack the launcher system to carry a nuclear device. This means, Iran is light years away to be an “existential threat” to Israel, not to speak to the world as propagandists’ tries to pretend. Beyond that, the Iranian leadership has not decided to build a nuclear bomb. They have religious and ethical reservations that the West should take serious. Out of racist prejudices, the West defames this religious statement by the supreme religious authority, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, by insinuating that he would deceive the public. Aren’t the Western politicians the ones who are misleading their constituency all the time?

What got the Israeli government so infuriated is the fact that more and more former intelligence people, military men and even a former prime minister are speaking out against an Israeli attack on Iran. The latest opposition voice came from the former head of the Israel Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin. In a meeting with residents of the city of Kfar Sava on Friday, April 27, 2012, Diskin said that Netanyahu and Barak are not worthy of leading the country. How dangerous both are for world peace shows the following: “I don't believe in either the prime minister or the defense minister. I don't believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings.” He named both the “two messianics“. Translated into political language, i .e. Both behave irrational. And he continued saying: “Believe me; I have observed them from up close ... They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off. These are not people who I would want to have holding the wheel in such an event. They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won't have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race." Some henchmen of the Israeli government were ready for battle and implied Diskin personal frustrations about of not being promoted to head the Israeli spy-organization Mossad. Letting these political gimmicks aside, the following question is still important to ask: How can it be that high ranking security people served over many years “irrational leaders” so servilely?

Even the current chief of staff of the IDF, General Benny Gantz, in an interview with the Israeli daily “Haaretz” in an Independence Day interview stated that the diplomatic and economic sanctions are bearing fruit. And in contrast to the alarmism spread by Netanyahu and Barak he said:” The military option is the last chronologically but the first in terms of its credibility. If it's not credible it has no meaning. We are preparing for it in a credible manner. That's my job, as a military man." And Gantz added: “Iran is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn't yet decided whether to go the extra mile."

The most important opponent of an attack on Iran is Meir Dagan. Few weeks ago, on “60 minutes” he admitted as the first high-ranking Israeli from the security establishment that the Iranian leadership acts rationally. It´s „not exactly our rational, but I think he (Ahmadinejad L. W.) is rational”. The Iranian leadership takes all “implications of their actions” into account before they decide. Among Western pundits and media people, the Iranian leadership is considered “crazy”. At a conference, sponsored by the right-wing Israeli newspaper “Jerusalem Post” in New York on April, 29, 2012, Dagan supported Yuval Diskin by saying, as a “friend” he “spoke his own truth”. And he added: "Diskin is a very serious man, a very talented man, he has a lot of experience in countering terrorism” and he "talked about a matter that is close to his heart." He also criticized both behind “close quarters and on many occasions” before he left office. Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan, who also attended the conference, had the thankless task defending Netanyahu and Barak. He did not just cut an unfortunate figure, but Dagan had accused him even of lying, while Erdan accused Dagan of sabotaging Netanyahu´s efforts of halting Iran´s nuclear aspirations. Also the former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the former IDF chief, General Gabi Ashkenasi, attended the conference, and they did not defend convincingly the government’s position.

Iran’s civilian nuclear program poses no threat to any country, and everybody knows it. The Iranians should feel threatened by Israel and the United States. Looking at their military might and their spending for deadly weaponry is frightening. The U. S. spends for its military machineries more than all the 193 Members of the United Nations combined. And Israel´s defense budget surpasses that of Iran by 10 to 1. Who are the countries that pose an “existential threat” to world peace? Didn’t the German Nobel laureate Guenter Grass ask the right question about Israel´s threat to world peace? Already in 2004, an opinion poll conducted by the European Union revealed that two third of the European public considered Israel the greatest threat to world peace, followed by North Korea, Iran and the United States.

The power struggle between Israel’s security establishments should tell the international public that an attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program would be highly dangerous and politically irresponsible. Despite the belligerent rhetoric, the U. S. and Israel are already fighting a cyber war and a war on sanctions against Iran. How come, that despite knowing better, the public is led astray by two Israeli “messianics”?